Page:The academic questions, treatise de finibus, and Tusculan disputations.djvu/36

Rh sacrilege; but that they were branded by public opinion to restrain fools. He is also reproved with utter atheism; and Cicero classes him with Diagoras, as a man who utterly denied the existence of any Gods at all.

Pyrrho was a contemporary of Alexander the Great, whose expedition into Asia he joined. He appears, as far as his philosophy went, to have been an universal sceptic. He impeached, however, none of the chief principles of morality, but, regarding Socrates as his model, directed all his endeavours towards the production in his pupils of a firm well-regulated moral character.

Crantor was a native of Soli in Cilicia; we do not know when he was born or when he died, but he came to Athens before 315. He was the first of Plato's followers who wrote commentaries on the works of his master. He died of dropsy, and left Arcesilaus his heir.

Arcesilaus, or Arcesilas, flourished about 280; he was born at Pitane, but came to Athens and became the pupil of Theophrastus and of Crantor, and afterwards of some of the more sceptical philosophers. On the death of Crantor he succeeded to the chair of the Academy, in the doctrines of which he made so many innovations that he is called the founder of the New Academy. What his peculiar views were is, however, a matter of great uncertainty. Some give him the credit of having restored the doctrines of Plato in an uncorrupted form; while, according to Cicero, on the other hand, (Acad. i. 12,) he summed up all his opinions in the statement that he knew nothing, not even his own ignorance. He, and the New Academy, do not, however, seem to have doubted the existence of truth in itself, but only the capacity of man for arriving at the knowledge of it.

Carneades was born at Cyrene about 213. He went early to Athens, and at first attended the lectures of the Stoics; but subsequently attached himself to the Academy, and succeeded to the chair on the death of Hegesinus. In the year 155, he came to Rome on an embassy, but so offended Cato by speaking one day in praise of justice as a virtue, and the next day, in answer to all his previous argu-